linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 00/36] AArch64 Linux kernel port

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Message-ID: <4FF93C99.80203@redhat.com>
Date:	Sun, 08 Jul 2012 03:54:01 -0400
From:	Jon Masters <jcm@...hat.com>
To:	Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>
CC:	Olof Johansson <olof@...om.net>,
	Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/36] AArch64 Linux kernel port

On 07/07/2012 03:27 PM, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Saturday 07 July 2012, Olof Johansson wrote:
> 
>>> ARM introduced AArch64 as part of the ARMv8 architecture
>>
>> With the risk of bikeshedding here, but I find the name awkward. How
>> about just naming the arch port arm64 instead? It's considerably more
>> descriptive in the context of the kernel.  For reference, we didn't
>> name ppc64, nor powerpc, after what the IBM/power.org marketing people
>> were currently calling the architecture at the time either.
> 
> I agree the name sucks, and I'd much prefer to just call it arm64
> as well. The main advantage of the aarch64 name is that it's the
> same as the identifier in the elf triplet, and it makes sense to
> keep the same name for all places where we need to identify the
> architecture. This also includes the rpm and dpkg architecture names,
> and the string returned by the uname syscall. If everything else
> is aarch64, we should use that in the kernel directory too, but
> if everyone calls it arm64 anyway, we should probably use that name
> for as many things as possible.

FWIW I actually really like the aarch64 name (but you know that already
:) ). I think it clearly spells out that this is not just a 64-bit
extension to the existing 32-bit ARM Architecture, it is a new (inspired
by ARM) architecture. Implementations will also run in AArch32 state
(A32 and T32), but it's not like x86->x86_64.

In our bikeshedding conversations pondering future Fedora support, we've
pretty much settled on the aarch64 name now, and the hope is that we can
also avoid providing 32-bit compatibility (multi-arch) by relying on
virtualized guests for any 32-bit story. If that holds, we have some
flexibility to e.g. go for 64K page size, etc. if we want.

Jon.
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